Men's dress rant

Not a good look

I hate summer. It brings out the worst things in life. The new Big Brother series. Ice Cream vans. And, God help us, mens’ legs. Especially old mens’ legs.

If I was Prime Minister, my top priority would be to make it an offence for men over 50 to wear shorts. Varicose veins and knees which look as if they’ve been put through a rock crusher would be classified as a threat to public health and morality and showable only in darkened rooms to a private audience. Failure to observe this would be an ASBO offence.

The wearing of sandals with uncut toenails, however, would incur the death penalty. Men would not be permitted to make like Rosa Klebs. If that’s your method of mowing the lawn, fine, but step out of the house like that, then – chop. I mean heads, not nails.

T shirts would grudgingly be permitted for males over 50, but only if no flesh is visible between the bottom hem and the belt. Having a beer belly which forces the bottom of the T shirt to nudge upwards would not be deemed an excuse. Exposure of pubic hair would be classified as Aggravated Navel Exposure - maximum penalty fifty lashes.

Now to the gravest matter of all. Today I saw a man, who shared Bill Nighy’s age group but not dress sense, with sagging man boobs, wrinkled arms and an underarm crow’s nest, wearing, and my trembling hands can barely type this, a Bruce Willis vest. Everything was revealed.

There’s only one solution for men like that. Stick their head on a pole and display it over London Bridge. It won’t look pleasant, but at least we won’t have to peer at the rest of their bodies.

All this is making me retch as much as it is you. I’m doing it out of pure public spiritedness. Make me PM and I pledge to enact all the above.

And then I’d go on to the lesser stuff such as eradicating poverty.

Dancing in the Patio

                                                        Inside, they're rockin'

“What do old people do at parties?” That’s an idle question My Teenage Self would ask occasionally, in between doing more interesting things such as spraypainting his bedroom slippers silver and flicking his fingernail dirt at the settee.

I’m in a position to report back to MTS. I was away at the Kirwood sister’s place in a Gloucestershire village over the weekend where we went to a do with friends down her lane.

Here’s my answer. “When they go to parties older people put on 60s pop music, drink beer, muck about and talk rubbish. Sound familiar?”

We also talked about holidays in Portugal and Mrs K’s choir singing. “Boring and trivial!!!” snorted MTS. “You didn’t talk about anything really important.” “Such as?” “Such as…such as… such as whether John Lennon wears contact lenses. Or did Derek Abbot at the end of the street really do 69 with a girl?”

“How about this?” I replied, “We also talked about the visit of Rowan Williams to the village the next day.” “HUH! I bet you didn’t roll a single joint. I bet no one puked over the roses. I bet you didn’t play Jimi Hendrix so loud that the neighbours called the police!”

“That’s because we were the neighbours. And what’s so bad about puking over roses? It fertilises them. Though I suppose it depends what’s in the puke.”

“Huh,” he snorted again, “A bunch of nobodies.”  “One of them was a District Councillor,” I answered hesitantly. “Traitor! Mixing with authority figures!” screamed MTS
.

I explained how we actually talked to each other, were still able to remember most of it the day after and how no one at any stage hunched over a mobile phone or glued themselves to their ipod.

He’d be OK about that. He hasn’t a clue about those things either. 

Ambulance music

Not Jazz

Jazz

                         

Just got back from the Copenhagen Jazz Festival. The politeness of the Danes teeters on the brink of criminality. If you scratch your head on the street ten of them will jump on you and ask if you want any help.

It didn’t stop them from flashing their mobile screens during the big gig at the Royal Theatre, though. Or the woman behind me sticking her bare feet up next to my head. Her toenails were lacerating my earlobes. But these were almost welcome distractions from what was happening onstage.

The support act were what you’d call ambient. This means they sounded like a whale in labour bumping into an iceberg. I guess they passed for jazz because they had a couple of saxes and introduced each other after every number. They all had the same floppy-on-one-side-of the-head haircut and were about 26 (that’s the total age, not the average). Their idea of improvisation was to play the same turgid three-note riff at slightly varying speeds. Needless to say, the audience whooped, roared and clapped. Their age was about 460 (again, a total, not including us).

You know you’re in trouble when a band’s name is more creative than their music. This lot were called Morons on Mogadon.  Well, they should have been.

Anyone under 30 should have to pass a test before being allowed to be in charge of a concert seat. Before that your musical tastes are still at the “Mummy I want a Curly Wurly bar” stage. Well, mine were. I remember going to hear The Crazy World of Arthur Brown in 1968 and thinking it was the greatest gig ever because he set his hair alight.

The main act in the Copenhagen Royal Theatre was guitar maestro John Schofield. Proper music. Nothing to do with ambience, nu jazz, fusion sounds or folky-hip hop grooves with a touch of acid house and a hint of baby vomit. But he was held up at the airport and we took  refunds. Typical.

On the way back to the hotel we popped into a bar and sang along to a cheesy covers singer doing “American Pie.” Compared to M on M - musical ecstasy.

Every day’s a bad hair day

                    
                                                                It's just not me

Haircut today. These days I leave it for months. It’s lost its fun. Gone are those happy decisions: Jon Lord mane, David Bowie mullet or Kevin Keegan frizz? These days I come out either nondescript smarmed-down or nondescript wispy. It’s been a successful cut if I can look in the mirror without reaching for a crucifix.

I had a woman this time. She was about 25 and approximately Polish. That’s fine. Poles are nifty at skidding a plastering trowel round a wall so I felt sure she could whisk a pair of scissors round my head. And a woman isn’t going to ask embarrassing questions about wanting something for the weekend.

OK, her conversation wouldn’t have got her on the Jonathan Ross Show: “And so we are feeling good today, yes sir?” But she snipped away with panache. Then she said “Is that so good for you sir?” and held the mirror behind my head. I groped for my specs as without them it’s a bit like looking through a windscreen in a blizzard. I stuck them on and gaped.

I had a mat of hair flopping over one side of my face with a six inch fringe drooping over my right eye. She’d given me an Indy band cut. My hair looked like a hamster slipping off the edge of a cliff.  I had a stark choice. Either an emergency administration of botox to make me look 20, or a drastic trim off the top of my head to make me look 60.

 “Noooo!” she cried. It was her masterpiece and I wanted her to desecrate it. I normally give barbers free rein but I put my foot down. A few snips later and I could face the streets. It’s all been another brutal reminder I’m way too old to look like a rock ‘n’ star.

Next time I’ll ask for a Miles Davis cut. It’ll look just as ridiculous on me but I’ll enjoy their confusion as they won’t know who the hell he is. And the music’s a lot better.

Hey diddly dee

                                                       Wherefore art thou, Romeo?

Another commercial audition on Wednesday. This time it was for milk. I was up for the part of, wait for it, a milkman. It’s nice to know the old trades aren’t disappearing, at least not in adland. And good news, I got a recall. It must have been my delivery.

It was my first milkman. I’ve played vicars, mad scientists, monks, dyspeptic men (Rennies), school janitors and Spanish magicians. I’ve been up for farmers, postmen, flute players, referees, shop assistants, sneezing men, coughing men and the chemists who give them prescriptions. But I’ve never been considered for Romeo or King Lear, and although I spend a lot of time muttering to myself, I’ve never been called to play Hamlet. Mind you, how well would Hamlet do in a commercial casting?

That’s the great thing about acting. My eyesight’s probably too dodgy to retrain as a surgeon, my reflexes too creaky to step in as an airline pilot, but I can still do the necessaries in a commercial audition.  That is, give your name and agent to the camera, (OK, that can be tricky after a couple of pints the night before), and turn both ways to give your profiles. I’m not boasting when I say that the gracefulness and speed of my turns are Olympic class.

And in a hundred years’ time, even though they may be filming onto omega rays transmitted directly to the underside of peoples’ eyelids, acting will still be the same. People will play people. And if the part is someone like me, then you’re not going to ask George Clooney or Ben Whishaw, you’re going to use me.

So let’s get into practice. How many pints do we want today, Mrs Jones?

Except they almost certainly won’t be using milkmen in a hundred years.

Don’t ask me nothin’ about nothin’, I might even give you the truth

Market Research questionnaires - the end of the world as we know it...

Cold showers at the swimming pool today again. It was built five years ago and, for most of that time, showering’s been like being sprayed by hailstones. Then, as I was leaving, a woman waved a questionnaire under my nose. Just to add to the misery.

“We value your opinions,” she said. “It’ll only take three minutes.” “That means ten,” I grumped.  “Noooooo,” she purred, being careful not to say what she really meant: “You stupid old bastard.” I was about so say “So you don’t value my opinions, then,” when I remembered the showers. Here was my chance to air my voice. “OK then,” I muttered.

I was manhandled into a chair as she thrust some A4 sheets and a pen into my hands. The paper was covered with 8 point type from edge to edge. One blink and I was already in need of an aspirin. I turned the page over, afraid. The worst happened. It was double-sided.

I was invited to give my thoughts on the toilets, the courtesy of the staff, the efficiency of the staff, the cleanliness of the foyer, the cleanliness of the poolside area, the ease of use, the quality of the food, the value for money of the food, the value for money of the pool, the courtesy of the food, the value for money of the courtesy, the edibility of the equipment, the supervisor’s tattoos, the inpenetrability of the attendants rap slang...

…all on a scale of one to five, where one means ecstatically brilliant and five means incitement to murder.

 And on the second sheet, I was invited to mark the importance to me of all the above on a scale of one to five where one means…. I think you’ve got the picture.

Five days later I got to the end. There was not one question on the showers. “My main comment,” I told my inquisitor, “is that the showers are freezing and have been for five years.”

“That’s terrible” she purred.

“But that’s the only point I want to make,” I grunted, “the rest is bullshit.”

“Sorry,” she said, arranging her face into the sympathetic look policeman are trained to give when they have to tell someone their dog’s been run over, “it’s not on the questionnaire.”

That’s ten minutes – sorry, five days - of my life I won’t get back.

In PC World no one can hear you scream

I bought a new monitor today. It’s lying on my bed still in the box. I only fit new hardware early in the day: I’m terrified of clicking a wrong button or something and putting all of London’s lights out.

As soon as I get into PC World, though, my technophobia turns into slavering. It’s a bit like a puritan stumbling across a very raunchy porn site. Like most men, gleaming black surfaces and glowing moving images bring out something deep within me. Maybe it’s some kind of prehistoric DNA memory of spotting the shiny tusks of mammoths striding through the tundra. I spend minutes drooling over and caressing smooth rectangular objects whose function is beyond me.

I’m pathetically eager not to seem a technoprat to the young assistants. This makes me ask questions which must make them think I’ve escaped from an institute for the semi-criminally insane. Pointing to a prospective monitor I found myself blabbering stuff like “How many RAM does it have?” or “Does it have a Blu Ray port?” when what I really want to ask is “Is that thing the On Switch?”

I’ve been trying to restrain myself from loading up with irresistible gadgets ever since I came home with what I thought was a tablet but was in fact a photo frame. I try to restrict impulse buys to the cheap stuff. I’ve a drawer full of mouse mats, two or three unused laptop bags and loads of books on Linux. I haven’t a clue what a Linux is, what it looks like or even whether I’ve got one. If you can advise, could you let me know?

I’m not giving out my email, though. If there’s a power cut across London tomorrow, I don’t want you getting on to me.